4 ms·

Your entire argument depends on the fiction that users can't make their own choices, or that somehow your code can be made non-OSS once released. Neither is tr

by pbsdp 13y ago

Your entire argument depends on the fiction that users can't make their own choices, or that somehow your code can be made non-OSS once released. Neither is true, and this hokey 'user rights' notion is just a thinly veiled justification for a paternalistic communist view of open source collaboration, in which you want to control not only your own code, but the code that other people write, too. It wouldn't be so insidious if it was presented honestly, as a set of limitations on freedom for your own benefit as the author of the GPL software, rather than in terms of the moral high ground of granting freedoms.

spacelizard 13y ago
>Neither is true, and this hokey 'user rights' notion is just a thinly veiled justification for a paternalistic communist view of open source collaboration, in which you want to control not only your own code, but the code that other people write, too. No, this makes no sense. The only people who want to "control code" are proprietary companies. Copyleft and the GPL is a rejection of this, the main goal of it is to ensure that all users have equal control over the software. I don't know know how you draw the conclusion that the GPL only benefits the author, as the author loses most if not all of the (unjust) powers granted by copyright by publishing under the GPL.
- pbsdp 13y ago
  > The only people who want to "control code" are proprietary companies. Copyleft and the GPL is a rejection of this ... So copyleft/GPL licensing isn't an attempt to 'control' code? Despite the fact that this is exactly what they do? > ... the main goal of it is to ensure that all users have equal control over the software. The users already have the choice to use open-source software vs. proprietary software. If they want to have "equal control" over the software, all they have to do is make the choice to only use open-source software. > I don't know know how you draw the conclusion that the GPL only benefits the author, as the author loses most if not all of the (unjust) powers granted by copyright by publishing under the GPL. The author enters into a quid-pro-quo arrangement by which they get access to other people's code under terms equal to their own, and they're free to relicense their own code for whatever commercial use they want. It's an attempt to create a communistic shared ownership of code.
  - spacelizard 13y ago
    Copyright is what allows people to "control code." Copyleft is necessary to in essence "reverse the effects" of copyright. So yes it does technically leverage the control copyright provides, but this is necessary as everything is copyrighted by default. The author being able to re-license code he owns the copyrights to is an unfortunate side effect of copyright, but there is little that copyleft can do about that, it could happen regardless of the license chosen. A possible solution would be to transfer copyright to a group or person you know will never license anything under a proprietary license, such as the FSF. Please refrain from using non-sequiturs like "communistic" to describe things. Copyleft does not deny anyone the ability to exercise any freedom including selling the software. The idea of copyright, and the idea that software should have "owners" are non-capitalistic ideas to begin with, so if anything the proprietary software companies are practicing authoritarianism.
    - pbsdp 13y ago
      It's hardly a non-sequitor; the parallels with Marxist thought on common ownership of the means of production are rather undeniable. Like communism did to economies, the GPL has done our industry immeasurable harm by attempting to enforce sharing, creating closed ecosystems where the cost of market entry was so high that other's had no choice but to participate -- such as was the case with GCC, until the GPLv3 gave Apple sufficient cause to make a massive investment in breaking the GPL's shackles on the compiler/runtime tools software market.
      - gillianseed 13y ago
        >the GPL has done our industry immeasurable harm by attempting to enforce sharing, creating closed ecosystems Your 'logic' is ridicoulus, GPL is no more 'enforcing' sharing than proprietary software is 'enforcing' non-sharing. And proprietary code is the epitome of a 'closed ecosystem' as it by definition doesn't share it's source code. Meanwhile GPL code is freely shared amongst compatible licenced code. Overall your entire line of thought is clearly that developers should not be allowed to share open source unless they allow it to be used in proprietary code, because if they don't they cause 'immeasurable harm' to the software industry. If anything it's your kind of person who has done 'immeasurable harm' to the software industry, leeches looking for a quick buck, who thinks it's unfair if they have to compete against open source if they can't take that open source and modify and sell it. Which in the end is all that your arguments boils down to, you want the right to use someone else's code without having to return the favour, if you can't then you cry foul. Whenever I come across someone like you I'm really glad the GPL exists as an alternative.
gillianseed 13y ago
No my entire argument depends on the FACT that GPL preserves end user rights which end users are not entitled to with permissive code and are not given with proprietary code. All your attempts to evade this point shows that you have no interest in any honest conversation. This is not about end user choice, this is about end user rights. With GPL licenced code end users have the _right_ to the source code which created the _actual_ binary they recieve. They don't have to demand the source code, but it is their right, they don't have to examine, modify, run a resulting binary of their own, but it is their right. These rights are NOT preserved with permissive licencing, and they are NOT granted by proprietary code. You try to muddy the waters by saying that 'users' don't have to use proprietary code unless they want to, but again developers doesn't have to use GPL licenced code so that doesn't have anything to do with this at all. Whenever you want to use someone else's code you are subject to their conditions, you sure see nothing wrong with setting conditions for using proprietary code (users can always say no), so by what logic do you think developers should not be allowed to set GPL conditions for their code? Your communist rant makes you sound like some crazy right-wing extremist, you want to have the right to use other people's code in your proprietary projects, but the notion of other developers instead wanting access to code used in conjunction with theirs in return somehow strikes you as some oppressive communist scheme??? Seriously??? You seem to think open source developers somehow owe you code to use in a proprietary fashion, and if they don't provide it under such conditions they are 'communists who wants to control other people's code'. I can't quite understand people like you.
- pbsdp 13y ago
  > I can't quite understand people like you. That's because you've pretty substantially misinterpreted what I said. I don't think "developers somehow owe you code to use in a proprietary fashion" -- developers are free to place any licensing restrictions they want on their work. What I do think is that the GPL is paternalistic, communistic, and intellectually dishonest. Here's why: - Once open sourced, your code stays open sourced forever. There's no way to "un-opensource" code, and users can make use of it, forever. - If users want the source code to the tools they use, they are absolutely free to only use binaries from people that provide the source code. If they don't want the code, they don't have to. Ergo, users already have the "rights" and/or "freedoms" you're pretending to gift to them. QED. What the GPL actually does is create a quid-pro-quo communist common ownership of the means of production (code) between developers. This has nothing to do with "rights" of end-users, and everything to do with restricting the rights of developers should they choose to participate in the GPL ecosystem. There's nothing wrong with that system (other than it being unworkable and viral and restrictive, but there's no law against being obtuse), but it is intellectually dishonest to claim some sort of moral or ethical high ground. The GPL is a simple mechanism to restrict what other people do with the code they write in exchange for using your code, not about "four freedoms" or "user rights". The parallel's to Marxist Philosophy ought to be pretty obvious in the aptly titled "Why Software Should Not Have Owners" essay from RMS: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-free.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-free.html

by pbsdp 13y ago

spacelizard 13y ago

>Neither is true, and this hokey 'user rights' notion is just a thinly veiled justification for a paternalistic communist view of open source collaboration, in which you want to control not only your own code, but the code that other people write, too. No, this makes no sense. The only people who want to "control code" are proprietary companies. Copyleft and the GPL is a rejection of this, the main goal of it is to ensure that all users have equal control over the software. I don't know know how you draw the conclusion that the GPL only benefits the author, as the author loses most if not all of the (unjust) powers granted by copyright by publishing under the GPL.

pbsdp 13y ago
> The only people who want to "control code" are proprietary companies. Copyleft and the GPL is a rejection of this ... So copyleft/GPL licensing isn't an attempt to 'control' code? Despite the fact that this is exactly what they do? > ... the main goal of it is to ensure that all users have equal control over the software. The users already have the choice to use open-source software vs. proprietary software. If they want to have "equal control" over the software, all they have to do is make the choice to only use open-source software. > I don't know know how you draw the conclusion that the GPL only benefits the author, as the author loses most if not all of the (unjust) powers granted by copyright by publishing under the GPL. The author enters into a quid-pro-quo arrangement by which they get access to other people's code under terms equal to their own, and they're free to relicense their own code for whatever commercial use they want. It's an attempt to create a communistic shared ownership of code.
- spacelizard 13y ago
  Copyright is what allows people to "control code." Copyleft is necessary to in essence "reverse the effects" of copyright. So yes it does technically leverage the control copyright provides, but this is necessary as everything is copyrighted by default. The author being able to re-license code he owns the copyrights to is an unfortunate side effect of copyright, but there is little that copyleft can do about that, it could happen regardless of the license chosen. A possible solution would be to transfer copyright to a group or person you know will never license anything under a proprietary license, such as the FSF. Please refrain from using non-sequiturs like "communistic" to describe things. Copyleft does not deny anyone the ability to exercise any freedom including selling the software. The idea of copyright, and the idea that software should have "owners" are non-capitalistic ideas to begin with, so if anything the proprietary software companies are practicing authoritarianism.
  - pbsdp 13y ago
    It's hardly a non-sequitor; the parallels with Marxist thought on common ownership of the means of production are rather undeniable. Like communism did to economies, the GPL has done our industry immeasurable harm by attempting to enforce sharing, creating closed ecosystems where the cost of market entry was so high that other's had no choice but to participate -- such as was the case with GCC, until the GPLv3 gave Apple sufficient cause to make a massive investment in breaking the GPL's shackles on the compiler/runtime tools software market.
    - gillianseed 13y ago
      >the GPL has done our industry immeasurable harm by attempting to enforce sharing, creating closed ecosystems Your 'logic' is ridicoulus, GPL is no more 'enforcing' sharing than proprietary software is 'enforcing' non-sharing. And proprietary code is the epitome of a 'closed ecosystem' as it by definition doesn't share it's source code. Meanwhile GPL code is freely shared amongst compatible licenced code. Overall your entire line of thought is clearly that developers should not be allowed to share open source unless they allow it to be used in proprietary code, because if they don't they cause 'immeasurable harm' to the software industry. If anything it's your kind of person who has done 'immeasurable harm' to the software industry, leeches looking for a quick buck, who thinks it's unfair if they have to compete against open source if they can't take that open source and modify and sell it. Which in the end is all that your arguments boils down to, you want the right to use someone else's code without having to return the favour, if you can't then you cry foul. Whenever I come across someone like you I'm really glad the GPL exists as an alternative.

gillianseed 13y ago

No my entire argument depends on the FACT that GPL preserves end user rights which end users are not entitled to with permissive code and are not given with proprietary code. All your attempts to evade this point shows that you have no interest in any honest conversation. This is not about end user choice, this is about end user rights. With GPL licenced code end users have the _right_ to the source code which created the _actual_ binary they recieve. They don't have to demand the source code, but it is their right, they don't have to examine, modify, run a resulting binary of their own, but it is their right. These rights are NOT preserved with permissive licencing, and they are NOT granted by proprietary code. You try to muddy the waters by saying that 'users' don't have to use proprietary code unless they want to, but again developers doesn't have to use GPL licenced code so that doesn't have anything to do with this at all. Whenever you want to use someone else's code you are subject to their conditions, you sure see nothing wrong with setting conditions for using proprietary code (users can always say no), so by what logic do you think developers should not be allowed to set GPL conditions for their code? Your communist rant makes you sound like some crazy right-wing extremist, you want to have the right to use other people's code in your proprietary projects, but the notion of other developers instead wanting access to code used in conjunction with theirs in return somehow strikes you as some oppressive communist scheme??? Seriously??? You seem to think open source developers somehow owe you code to use in a proprietary fashion, and if they don't provide it under such conditions they are 'communists who wants to control other people's code'. I can't quite understand people like you.

pbsdp 13y ago
> I can't quite understand people like you. That's because you've pretty substantially misinterpreted what I said. I don't think "developers somehow owe you code to use in a proprietary fashion" -- developers are free to place any licensing restrictions they want on their work. What I do think is that the GPL is paternalistic, communistic, and intellectually dishonest. Here's why: - Once open sourced, your code stays open sourced forever. There's no way to "un-opensource" code, and users can make use of it, forever. - If users want the source code to the tools they use, they are absolutely free to only use binaries from people that provide the source code. If they don't want the code, they don't have to. Ergo, users already have the "rights" and/or "freedoms" you're pretending to gift to them. QED. What the GPL actually does is create a quid-pro-quo communist common ownership of the means of production (code) between developers. This has nothing to do with "rights" of end-users, and everything to do with restricting the rights of developers should they choose to participate in the GPL ecosystem. There's nothing wrong with that system (other than it being unworkable and viral and restrictive, but there's no law against being obtuse), but it is intellectually dishonest to claim some sort of moral or ethical high ground. The GPL is a simple mechanism to restrict what other people do with the code they write in exchange for using your code, not about "four freedoms" or "user rights". The parallel's to Marxist Philosophy ought to be pretty obvious in the aptly titled "Why Software Should Not Have Owners" essay from RMS: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-free.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-free.html